Rage over Muslim water park day isn’t new. But Texas GOP needs bogeyman | Opinion

A crowd of 9,000 was coming for a day of laughs and fun at “Muslim Family Day.”

Then, one angry political commentator raised a ruckus wanting it stopped.

The commentator claimed Muslim families weren’t coming for holiday fun. They were radical, waging holy war against America and spreading “anti-Western hatred.”

The year was not 2026.

It was 2007.

But we’re not any smarter.

Nearly 20 years after a Florida commentator stoked a panic by writing “JIHAD!” in red paint across a poster for a Six Flags Over Texas family ticket promotion, we are reliving the same bigotry and division.

This time, it’s conservative Christian activists who raised a fuss to stop Muslim families from having fun.

The party was going to be June 1 at Epic Waters Indoor Waterpark in Grand Prairie, an 80,000-square-foot indoor water attraction rated among the best in the nation.

But a far-right political podcaster complained.

So, the Texas governor shut down the party.

Gov. Greg Abbott warned Grand Prairie to cancel the rental or face a big loss of state funding. He called the event illegal discrimination.

The party’s organizers didn’t help.

A south Dallas associate imam and his educator wife had rented the city-owned water park for what was openly advertised at first as a “Muslim-only event.” Then, they backtracked and changed it to “modest dress only.”

But by then, Abbott had all the fodder he needed.

He compared the event to a host renting out a city swimming pool for a ticketed “whites-only” party.

Unfortunately, the imam has made it worse.

Muhammad Abdullah, also youth director at a private school in east Fort Worth, posted videos to announce loudly that he is “not backing down.”

“I’m taking these bigoted, hate-filled politicians down!” he shouted in one video, showing photos of Abbott, Texas’ governor since 2015.

In another, he said his family’s lives are being threatened.

He blamed “these bigoted, hateful, Islamophobe podcasters” who divide Americans.

Look, nobody’s life should be threatened over a family water park party.

But this is a debate over a civil-rights law that also protects American Muslims and all Americans from discrimination.

Defenders of the water park party, including state Rep. Salman Bhojani, D-Euless, point out that churches and all religious groups are legally allowed to gather freely and that laws prevent discrimination against religious groups or treating them differently.

But is a city-owned facility required to rent space to a white-only Christian Identity church for a white supremacist party?

Traditionally, that answer has been no.

But court decisions keep changing.

Unlike in 2007, when the Six Flags family day promotion went on uninterrupted despite a protest, this drama unfolded against the backdrop of an election where Texas Muslims have become a political punching bag.

MAGA Republican candidates are openly opposed to religious pluralism. Christian conservatives fear losing their immense political power.

But basically, Republicans have mostly banned abortion and tightened the border. They needed a new issue to stir up the church vote.

So, they make it sound as if Texas’ mostly moderate Muslim communities are all right-wing Islamists bent on enforcing sharia as law. Abbott has even gone out of his way to stop a Plano mosque from developing a new suburban subdivision.

“This is pure red meat for the MAGA base,” Matthew Wilson, director of the Center for Faith and Learning at SMU, said before the March 3 primaries.

“Candidates and factions are looking for an edge to fire up the activists,” he said.

Every 20 years or so, Texas has another Great Muslim Panic.

This one stopped kids from having fun.